Starting with the 1931 Japanese occupation on Manchuria, the war was fought bloody and long. With a pretext conflict in 1937 on the incident of the Marco polo bridge near Beijing, it had fully embarked on open war. As the war was declared, China's war effort could not hope to match with the Japanese expansion and more than 90 million Chinese citizens became refugees in their own country. As the war continued, many other groups rose up to create even more conflict, "while the war with Japan was fought with terrible levels of atrocity, Chiang's security chief Dai Li ran a terror organization that killed and tortured thousands of Chinese suspected of treason or being communist." However, the terrible levels of atrocities and inside conflicts, the Chinese managed to win the war against Japan as its forces remain undefeated and unwilling to surrender, Japan was exhausted and could not focus on the war in the Western Front.
You bring up an interesting point which is how Japan's war against China for resources weakened them in the rest of the war. During this time, Japan also attacked America. This could be considered a mistake due to their current involvement with China and what this led to. From the attack on the Philippines America started preparing for complete war, and were much stronger than Japan. America overreacted, and the Japanese were not able to gain any US land.
ReplyDeleteI'm really glad that someone wrote on this topic. I was not fully aware of the degree at which the Japanese and Chinese militaries were in conflict with one another during WWII. I knew that both countries were on opposing sides, but I was completely unaware of basically everything else you wrote in this post. When learning about WWII, I have never been formally taught about any of the countries involved that were farther east than Russia, so having this information really helps show how global this conflict really was.
ReplyDeleteI knew about the Japanese invasion of China but I had always wondered why Japan thought they could overrun such a geographically expansive and hugely populated country with their seemingly limited resources, but now I see why it was feasible at the time. I did not know that the horrors committed by the Japanese army was not only approved of but that high level security chief fronted part of it. It also helps explains Japan's stretched men and resources as they fought America in the Pacific.
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